Mr. Carpenter:Well mostly In feudalistic and manorial societies where men were enslaved and legally bound to the estate in order to FORCE them at the point of the sword, gun and whip to produce enough food for the upper class to survive and pursue their vain and arrogant lives of leisure.

See. can't let someone make a choice. You must MAKE them buy it. That is the problem.if they do not buy it then they go to jail or lose their property or get a "fee or fine" ,but to hell with ...wait...is someone playing a fife? Lisa, is someone playing a fife?

The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) proposes regulations to implement the new Asparagus Revenue Market Loss Assistance Payment (ALAP) Program authorized by the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (the 2008 Farm Bill). The purpose of the program is to compensate domestic asparagus producers for marketing losses resulting from imports during the 2004 through 2007 crop years. Payments will be calculated based on 2003 crop production. Through the ALAP Program, CCC is authorized to provide up to $15 million in direct payments to asparagus producers. This rule proposes eligibility requirements, payment application procedures, and the method for calculating individual payments. This rule also proposes new information collection for the payment application.

The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) proposes regulations to implement the new Asparagus Revenue Market Loss Assistance Payment (ALAP) Program authorized by the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (the 2008 Farm Bill). The purpose of the program is to compensate domestic asparagus producers for marketing losses resulting from imports during the 2004 through 2007 crop years. Payments will be calculated based on 2003 crop production. Through the ALAP Program, CCC is authorized to provide up to $15 million in direct payments to asparagus producers. This rule proposes eligibility requirements, payment application procedures, and the method for calculating individual payments. This rule also proposes new information collection for the payment application.

This is a subsidy to replace revenue lost to imports, though, so it's not quite what I'm looking for. I want to see healthy foods subsidized because we want them to beaffordable for consumers. That is the point of dairy and corn subsidies, which is why we are fat.

Asparagus farmers have to compete with imports and this is supposed to help them. Maybe it does. I think we should subsidize it to the point where, like corn, it is far cheaper to buy than it is to grow. It should be 25 cents a pound at the grocery, and corn should be at what the market will bear.

That is a fascinating article, but it doesn't say what you're implying it says. It says that 90% of subsidies go to four crops; corn, soy, cotton, and wheat. Fresh fruits and vegetables are called "specialty crops" and receive next to nothing if they receive anything at all.

We should change that. Which is exactly what I and the article are talking about.

This is kind of a dicey issue. On the one hand, we need our farmers profitable or our food supply will be vulnerable; on the other hand, paying farmers for failure just motivates farm development in risky areas that shouldn't necessarily be developed. Maybe to get your farm insurance, you should have to have at least x average crop yields for the same area over the previous ten years? But this isn't the real issue. The real issue is massive farm subsidies. We are currently subsidizing corn by like 35%, and soy nearly as much, which causes large surpluses of corn and soy, which are then used to slowly poison us to death in the form of sugar and soy additives. Meanwhile, regular vegetables are subsidized more like 10%. Everything is backwards, and it's destroying our crop diversity and killing vast numbers of people. You wouldn't need a Bloomberg big soda ban if that soda cost 30-40% more.